Asmodeus: ...Most ads are annoying tbh, seems to be a lack of clever ads and a majority of morons bellowing as much crap in 30 seconds as they can...

That's where you are wrong my friend. All of the annoying ads are very clever. They are purposely annoying so you remember the product and/or company they are promoting. Notice how you managed to rattle off the name of the companies of each of the ads you found annoying? You went even further to post their names on the internet in this forum. Success in the eyes of an advertising company!

It may be a definition of success for the advertising company and easily measurable recall for a client but it is a big fail for FTA TV. Setting some ad presentation standards at least for some programs in regular timeslots and allowing only presentations meeting those standards would get FTA some viewers back. Many ads are too painful in sharp transitions even with the sound turned down. Even though I am interested to see HN and NL specials and happy to watch a chilled out presentation appropriate for the time of day I avoid watching the current sledgehammer approach entirely and get or wait for the DVD for any movie or serial I want to see more than 10 minutes of. The FTA's are engaged in a race to the bottom of the market.

JimmyH: Ads work for me when they aren't annoying and impart actual, useful, information. Knowing that, for instance, ABC Retail has 25% off laptops might induce me to go there and purchase, assuming I'm in the market for a laptop. It needs to be supported by a good website so I can go there and check the model number, compare prices, and read the specs (and potentially reviews) on the models I'm interested in first - otherwise I probably won't bother making a trip. JB HiFi annoys me in this regard - their flyer often shows the item and the price, but doesn't state the model number. Therefore, I am unlikely to go and purchase (unless it's obvious what the model is).

An offensive/annoying ad that shouts at me doesn't get watched - it just prompts a quick press of the 60-second skip (usually), or the mute button (when I'm occasionally watching live). Saturation bombing me with the same ad every ad break prompts the same reaction.

Not sure what JB HiFi flyers you look at, but I have got one here, and every hardware product has it's model number in the blurb, next to a five digit number which is their internal code for the product. If you type that 5 digit number into the search on their webpage, you also get the product there.

Thanks, it's good to know they are now doing that. They didn't used to, which is the principal reason I more or less stopped looking through their flyers. The ad is pretty useless unless you know what the model is. I asked someone who worked there at the time why, and they explicitly stated it was to stop people doing price comparisons with other retailers and online.